Telgi falls

The infamous stamp paper scam is beginning to wind down. Investigations were started in 1992 and the main accused, Abdul Karim Telgi, has been in jail since 2002. The Hindu records the bare facts of Telgi’s sentence in three of the last few cases:

A local sessions court on Wednesday sentenced Abdul Karim Telgi to life imprisonment for his role in forgery, counterfeiting and cheating in the multi-crore stamp paper scam.
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Three policemen — K.K. Parmar, A.B. Sonwalkar and Ganpat Jadhav — were convicted of insubordination, abetting and allowing Mr. Telgi to flee. Mr. Parmar was awarded a jail term of six years, Mr. Sonwalkar got a four-year term and Mr. Jadhav five years for misconduct and insubordination, along with a fine of Rs. 15,000 each. The charge sheet states that the officers “failed to comply with the instructions given by the superiors… failed to arrest or interrogate Telgi” and adds that the officers made false entries in the case diaries.

A special CBI court on Wednesday convicted Abdul Karim Telgi and 11 others in one of the fake stamp paper scam-related cases but rejected an application seeking to make former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh an accused.

Ram Ratan Soni, one of the accused, had alleged that it was during Deshmukh’s tenure as state revenue minister that Telgi was granted the stamp vending license, so he be impleaded in the case.

There is widespread belief that a scam of this magnitude could not have been operated entirely by Telgi. As a result, even now political allegations fly thick and fast. For example, IBN Live reported:

Commenting on [MNS leader Raj] Thackeray’s allegation that [Maharashtra PWD minister Chhagan] Bhujbal had a link with Abdul Karim Telgi, the prime accused in multi-stamp paper scam, the minister said, Telgi had been released sixteen times during the BJP rule. “But when I was the Home Minister of the state, he was arrested,” he said.

On Sunday, actor Vivek Oberoi allegedly shouted at journalists during his visit to Mathura as a star-campaigner in Uttar Pradesh elections because he was asked the ‘uncomfortable’ question of whether he knew that the Rashtriya Lokdal candidate whom he was seeking votes for, was allegedly involved
in the Telgi scam.